


when the sunlight dies

by TheHiddenPassenger



Series: California 2019 [2]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4703858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHiddenPassenger/pseuds/TheHiddenPassenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their cause is doomed. They have nowhere left to run in the city. Now, two pivotal individuals must escape Battery City before they, too are taken in by the mega-corporation that seeks to control everything in sight. Follow everyone's favorite, wheelchair-bound DJ and his trusty, skate-clad sidekick in their final hours as Steve Righ? and Ricky Rebel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the sunlight dies

Steve's been in enough wars to know when one is lost. This one—no matter how hard they fight—will not end their way. It is not in the cards. Of course, the old Analogue War hero doesn't say anything like that to anyone but Ricky. The firefight that paralyzed him has taken a lot more than his legs these days, however and even Ricky finds himself guessing what the grizzled fellow is thinking.

Because of this silence, the younger man has begun taking matters into his own hands and organizing a mass Exodus from what was once Los Angeles. The City of Angels has become an industrial, technological hell... clean, perfect, sterile. Well, not yet. It's in the process of sterilization and there is blood running in the streets, literal and figurative.

“We're getting out tonight,” Ricky whispers to his partner, who's half asleep, slumped over a pile of maps and schematics. Their plans to raid the local guard station are caffeine-fueled and desperate. No one is likely to make it out alive, least of all a paraplegic war veteran.

“Like hell,” the old guy snarls, soon as the words leave Ricky's mouth. Steve fixes him with a glare that could curdle milk; his jaw is tight as a bowstring. But Ricky won't leave it alone. They're outnumbered and hopelessly overwhelmed.

“I get it, this is your war too, but we can't just sit here, dig in and wait for them to slaughter us, or worse...” He trails off as the rumors of what “worse” might be crawl to the forefront of his mind. Strange, pale-faced, mindless creatures, shooting to kill and making very little noise bursting into the homes of known anti-BLI freedom fighters—terrorists as the new government is calling them—and taking children, gunning down pregnant mothers, taking those healthy enough to fight and... and...

Turning them into... whatever _they_ are.

Everyone is too scared to name it, far and away too frightened to give these awful things a name and in no way positioned to strategize around them. There are simply too few left to physically resist the inexorable takeover.

“We aren't gunna cut and run, Rick',” Steve straightens his back and twists it, cracking what functioning vertebrae he has left. The option for braces has been opened to him thanks to hard physical therapy, but the chair offers more mobility for his arms when he's on the go. And they're always on the go. Their faction has been driven to a slum just near the outer wall—a frightfully stark thing that seems to have arisen in only a few weeks' time.

It would be impressive were the implications thereof not so terrifying.

The broadcasts have been going as long as the super-conglomerate has been in power... which seems like forever, but has only been a few years. Newsreels replay staged footage of “terrorist attacks” and old cinematics of testing on Bikini Atoll to display the so-called “nuclear weaponry” that is supposedly being hurled at the city from terrorist cells outside.

Scaremongering and propaganda is plastered to every wall, on every screen, in every school—and on the lips of children. Anyone who resists is a hater of peace, of unity, of the unborn and their grandmother. All the homosexuals, the “trannies,” the deviant ones—artists, poets, writers, musicians, dreamers—those useless to society... THEY are working with the terrorists and have infiltrated the precious streets of the former Los Angeles.

No one seems to worry that Better Living Industries has seen fit to rename the city in their image. They are too busy fretting that the ever-advancing scum of society is even now upon their wives, their children, their precious homes and shops, churches, parks and jobs.

In reality, it is BL/Ind dropping bombs outside the city, to clear a field around its walls so as to be easily defended by the turrets thereupon and the patrols without. Whether or not it is nuclear in nature remains to be seen, as no one has yet escaped.

But Ricky Rebel has a plan.

There are a few resistance fighters who've agreed to help him get Steve out of the city and into the wastelands beyond. Ricky figures it's better to die out there than in a hole, here, trapped like a rat or...to become one of _them_. The vehicles are ready—it's really a whole caravan of them, ready to die for the old fellow who's inspired so many.

“Steve, there are a shitload of kids who need you alive, okay?” Ricky hopes to appeal to his friend's fatherly side. “You remember that orphanage—how it was...all white, completely sterile. This little gal over here...” He jerks his thumb toward a sleeping infant, barely a year old. “She'd be a zombie, same as the rest if it weren't for you. But you don't get out of this so easily as dying, you get me?”

He's got to dig deep and twist if Steve is going to listen to him. It's cruel, Ricky knows, but it has to be done if they're going to get the hell out of Dodge.

The man's eyes rise from his maps and charts and plans and move about the room. There's no one around but Ricky and the girl, whose name no one knows. Soft, brown pools fall on her, sleeping, burst of dark curly hair sitting atop her head and surrounding her cherubic face. She did not ask for this. No one could have planned for it. So what's a man to do but fight for her, he figures. At the same time...

“You're right,” mutters the wheelchair-bound freedom fighter, “Ricky, you're right. I can't... _we_ can't keep fighting a losing battle when our future is the children we're throwing into the meat grinder. That makes us like them—no, it makes is worse.”

Slowly, Ricky nods, not wanting to encourage more negative feelings, but unable to argue with Steve's train of thought. That's why the guy's in charge, he supposes. Steve Righ? has always had a way with words and that's what they've all been hanging on. If he leaves, others will follow. It's not ideal, but it beats dying for no damn reason.

“Tonight,” whispers Ricky, seeing the girl stir in her nest of blankets and not wanting to awaken her before it is necessary. “I've got a battalion waiting to escort a couple vanloads of kids...and before you argue, just fucking don't, okay? I know what you're going to say, and just... give up. These people have volunteered to help.”

“Then I have no reason to worry,” Steve sighs, backing his chair away from the table and gesturing to Ricky with a flick of his finger. The tension momentarily drains from the body of the slender fellow and he makes his way through their cramped safe haven to Steve's chair, where he then drops to his knees and lays his head on Steve's immobile lap.

“You're okay with it, then?” Ricky asks without putting his head up. Steve's got his fingers tangled in the other man's hair and is massaging his scalp the way most people pet a cat. It's a weird little ritual they have, but Ricky likes it.

“No, oh, hell no,” responds Steve with almost a snarl, “but I don't have a choice. I've got a responsibility to these kids.”

Ricky moans in answer, hypnotized by the rhythmic motions of his partner's hand over his scalp. Gooseflesh rises over bare arms and he sighs emphatically to display approval without actually vocalizing it. He nuzzles against Steve's lap, grasping at the arms of the wheelchair for purchase.

Nothing will come of this display of affection right now, as there's a sleeping baby in the room and that kind of behavior is best left in private. That being the case, Ricky still enjoys his head scratched as much as the next cat—in the actual feline sense, rather than a hip way to address a fellow human being. Groovy, flowered, poignant speeches are Steve's department, not Ricky's.

“Rick, Steve, up and at 'em, boys,” a strong, female voice barks from the doorway. They immediately shush the source, who apologizes minutely but moves quickly to grasp the swaddled baby from her resting spot, “it's time to go.”

The woman in question is large, immense in her height. She's had to duck under the not-quite-standard-sized doorway to get in. Large, painted lips are pursed and a strong jaw is tight with nerves, perhaps, or resolve.

“We're getting out of here,” Ricky says to Steve, by way of reminder that their plan is to be hastily implemented. The vet' nods, turning to the giant woman, her face a patchwork of colors, something of a canvas of creamy ivory and ebony, black as night. Something glows behind golden eyes, a deep pain, sadness, and something else, too. Hope. Steve has to use this if he's going to play Moses and lead these folks through the desert. To add to the distress, there is no Promised Land, or even an other side, that they know of. There is only “not here” and right now, it is a powerful motivator.

“Roger,” acknowledges Steve after a few moments. “Esther, you hold that little gal like she was your own, you dig?”

“She's my own flesh and blood, far as I'm concerned,” replies Esther, “ain't nobody gon' touch my baby.”

The large woman nods and ducks her way under the door frame, once more leaving Steve and Ricky alone with each other and their thoughts. The wheelchair-bound one wonders what plans his people have for this last safehouse. As if reading his thoughts, Ricky responds with only two words:

“Burn it.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, I'm going to warn y'all that these Cali 2019 stories are in no particular order and while many of them might center around the Lost Boys (All Time Low), or the Vaudevillains (Panic! at the Disco), this is not always the case.


End file.
